Its a Dell XPS L502X. The “?”, the “5” and the parenthesis key just above the “?” dont work unless you press down really hard. Its worse when I first power on the laptop. They seem to get slightly more responsive after it gets warm or I’ve pressed them a few times.
I watched a tutorial on replacing the keyboard and it’s pretty simple. But before I pay for a new keyboard, is there anything simple I should check first? Nothing has been spilled on it, its extremely clean etc.
Replacing the keyboard is your best option, but you might try removing it and cleaning your old one first. Maybe there is something stuck under each key?
You might be surprised at the amount of crud that gets under the keyboard.
Agreed with the above.
It happened to me too: my (then) baby son barfed breastmilk on it after which a few keys didn’t respond. I was surprised to learn how easy it was to remove the keys with a flat screwdriver and clean. Depends on the type of keyboard probably …
Laptop keyboards & desktop keyboards are quite different in this regard.
Still, the OP has nothing to lose by removing his/her current keyboard. If the cleaning works, great. If not he/she will need to remove it to install a new one anyhow.
Just make sure you can get the keys back on after you pop them off. We had a Lenovo laptop that my then-toddler granddaughter managed to pop a few keys off of, and we were never able to get them to snap back on. When she later managed to pop off about a quarter of the keys, we just wound up getting a wireless keyboard and used that.
Have you taken it and put it upside down and tapped it?
Be gentle with laptop keys (and most laptop parts in general), it is so easy to break them. Many keys have two sets of thin plastic arms that scissor open and closed as the key goes up and down, exactly the same way the legs of an ironing board work. It is so easy to break that mechanism and then that key is just broken. Fortunately it should take less force to pry off those keys than it would on a regular keyboard so you don’t have to be rough.
Cleaning under the keys is a good first choice. If that doesn’t help, I see replacement keyboards for around $20 for your laptop and it’s not that hard to swap it out. Just be glad it’s not the screen or an internal component going bad.
Good point if you were doing it for the fun of it … I did actually consider that and had no idea what I was doing, but since it would be hard to make things worse I gave it a try. Same goes for the OP.
On the other hand, this was a few years ago and a laptop that was old even then. It had a keyboard much like a standard desktop keyboard, with crevices where the dirt could get in. The one I’m typing on now seems constructed very differently… I never really noticed before btw 